The best of leaders at the worst of times: medical scientist and war premier

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-157
Author(s):  
Nicholas Coni

Professor Juan Negrín López was Prime Minister of the democratically elected left-wing government of Spain for the latter two-and-a-half years of the three-year Civil War which ravaged the country between 1936 and 1939. The side loyal to the government lost, partly because of the generous aid received by their opponents from Germany and Italy, partly because of the Anglo-French agreement, observed by most countries but ignored by Germany and Italy, to outlaw arms supplies to either side, partly because of internal dissent, and partly because of the greater military capability of the enemy. Negrín led the country with tenacity and wisdom, but is remembered with ambivalence in Spain, and hardly at all elsewhere, although he spent the years of his post-war exile in the UK and France. This paper draws attention to a member of the medical profession who achieved both academic and political distinction, but whose career ended in a disaster which he was powerless to prevent. Among his admirable qualities, he should be remembered for his courage. Like most wars, the Spanish Civil War had its share of psychopaths and villains – but also its share of heroes, and Juan Negrín belongs among their number.

Author(s):  
David Jones

The Spanish Civil War was a major military conflict between right-wing Nationalists and left-wing Republicans that erupted after a coup d’état was staged by rebel generals against the democratically elected Republican government. Following the ‘defense of Madrid’, during which Republicans held off a Nationalist siege on the Spanish capital, the conflict settled into a war of attrition, with Spain divided into two radically opposed territories. On the Nationalist side, an authoritarian dictatorship bolstered by the fascistic Carlist and Falange militias under General Francisco Franco (1892–1975) emerged, representing the interests of Spain’s conservative and Catholic élites. On the Republican side, defenders of the government of President Manuel Azaña (1880–1940) organized around radical anarchist and socialist trade unions (CNT, UGT, POUM) and volunteer militias.


2020 ◽  
pp. 29-57
Author(s):  
Stephen Wall

Post-war Labour and Conservative governments saw the UK’s global interests as lying primarily with the United States and the Commonwealth. They took no part in the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community or in the proposed European Defence Community, though, when the EDC idea foundered, Prime Minister Anthony Eden played a prominent role in promoting European defence, just as Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had done in fostering the establishment of NATO. The British sent only an observer to the Messina Conference (1956) that negotiated the terms of the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Community (EEC). The UK set up its own trading bloc (EFTA) but it could not compete politically or economically with the EEC and, in 1961, the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan applied for EEC membership, despite the opposition of France’s President de Gaulle.


1990 ◽  
Vol 133 ◽  
pp. 78-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Feinstein ◽  
Robin Matthews

The completion of Mrs Thatcher's first ten years as Prime Minister stimulated many surveys of the economic policy of the government during that time in office (for instance Layard and Nickell 1989; Bean and Symons 1989). Authors writing at that time were concerned particularly to make comparisons with the performance of the predominantly Labour governments that had been in power during the previous economic cycle, running from 1973 to 1979.


Author(s):  
Fraser Raeburn

Scotland suffered acutely from the economic and political crises of the interwar period, with industrial decline, mass unemployment and cultural uncertainty in evidence by the early 1920s. This chapter explores the consequences of this economic and social dislocation for Scottish politics in the lead up the late 1930s. Particular emphasis is given to left-wing politics and anti-unemployment activism, suggesting that the roots of a distinctively Scottish response to the Spanish Civil War lay in older radical political cultures that had survived and evolved into the interwar era.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-267
Author(s):  
Eduardo González Calleja

The bibliography on the Spanish Civil War is almost unattainable, but the matter continues to elicit such interest that it remains open to new historiographic trends. For example, the ‘classic’ military history of the conflict, cultivated prominently in recent years by Gabriel Cardona, Jorge Martínez Reverte and Anthony Beevor, does not renounce the microhistory or cultural perspective. These constitute the theoretical framework of the New Military History and its corollary the New Combat History, which combine philological, anthropological, psychological and historiographical perspectives to various degrees. In the specific field of the war experiences pioneered by George L. Mosse, the concepts of brutalisation, barbarisation and demodernisation of military operations, coined by Omer Bartov to describe the particularities of the Eastern campaign during the Second World War, are being used by Spanish historians dedicated to the study of the violence and atrocities of the civil war and post-war. Focusing on the field of political history, government management or diplomacy has been studied almost exhaustively, but this is not the case for the principal phenomenon of political violence in the 1930s in Europe, namely paramilitarisation. It is surprising that the latest studies on the issue at the European level (Robert Gerwarth, John Horne, Chris Millington and Kevin Passmore) do not include any essays on the enormous incidence of paramilitary violence in Spain before, during and after the civil war.


Urban Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hoolachan ◽  
Kim McKee

In contrast to the post-war period, the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the UK have been characterised by the advancement of neoliberal policies including privatisation of the housing system and employment casualisation. Consequently, there are growing socioeconomic inequalities between those born in the post-war period – the ‘Baby Boomers’ – and the younger generation – the ‘Millennials’. Such inequalities have led to narratives of inter-generational conflict with Baby Boomers framed as jeopardising the futures of Millennials. Drawing on Mannheim’s theory of social generations, the concept of generational habitus and qualitative data from 49 Baby Boomers and 62 Millennials, we unpack the ways in which inter-generational inequalities are intersubjectively understood and discussed. Our data indicate that while young people are aware of inter-generational inequalities, they do not feel resentful towards their parents’ generation for profiting at their expense. Instead, many blame the government for not representing their interests. Thus, narratives of inter-generational conflict misleadingly direct blame towards the agency of Baby Boomers rather than political structures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-346
Author(s):  
David Mangan*

2020 had been marked as a significant year for the UK with its departure from the European Union. The coronavirus pandemic quickly became the most important issue facing the Government under a third Prime Minister since the 2016 referendum. From the start, problems have dogged this Government in meeting the monumental challenges posed by Covid-19. The UK approached the work implications of this pandemic in some distinct ways, as compared to European Union Member States. This piece is longer than other country reports in this volume as a result of critically engaging with these differences.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 428-446
Author(s):  
Layla Renshaw

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was triggered by a military uprising against the democratically elected Popular Front government. Away from the battlefield, this war was characterized by the politically-motivated murder of thousands of civilians, many of whom were buried in clandestine graves throughout Spain. Following Franco’s victory and subsequent dictatorship, there were strong prohibitions on commemorating the Republican dead. A radical rupture in Spain’s memory politics occurred from 2000 onwards with the founding of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory and other similar pressure groups that have organized the exhumation and reburial of the Republican dead. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in communities in Castile and León, and Extremadura as they underwent mass grave investigations. It examines the experience of theft and dispossession that occurred as part of the Francoist repression of Republicans. Accounts of these episodes focus on stolen and looted objects robbed from the dead during the killings, from the graves’ post-mortem, or from surviving relatives as part of the systematic dispossession of Republican households that occurred during the war and immediate post-war period. These narratives surface with frequency during the investigation and exhumation of mass graves. Despite the fact that many are lost forever, these stolen possessions can function as powerful mnemonic objects with a strong affective and imaginative hold. The narratives of dispossession explore themes of survival, the experiences of women and children, and the impact of slow violence. By invoking theft and stolen objects, these stories highlight forms of trauma and forms of memory that may not be represented fully by the dominant investigative paradigm of the mass grave exhumation with its inherent focus on death, cataclysmic violence and the tangible, physical traces of the past.


1963 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-403
Author(s):  
Joe Robert Juárez

Civil War broke out in Spain in 1936. Following eight years of dictatorship by General Primo de Rivera, who had acted with the approval of King Alfonso XIII, elections were held in June, 1931, for a constituent assembly. The election returns brought in a republican-socialist majority, which forbade the king’s return, confiscated his property, and proclaimed Spain a republic. The republic had enemies on both the right and the left. The large landholders, the army, and the Church had vested interests which the republic proceeded to attack. On the left, the anarchists and socialists became more /radical, competing for the loyalty of the Spanish workers. The republic’s problems were compounded by the traditional separatist movements of Catalans, Basques, and Gallegans. Power shifted from the left in 1931 to the right in 1933, and, finally, in February, 1936, to a “popular front “government. The Popular Front, however, proved to be a coalition for election purposes only. Largo Caballero, the leader of the left wing of the socialists, declined to serve in the moderate Azaña cabinet. In July, 1936, army, monarchist, clerical, and Carlist groups joined with the Falange to bring about a counter-revolutionary coup under the leadership of General Francisco Franco. The Civil War had started. It was to last for three brutality-filled years.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 222-245
Author(s):  
FáBIO DA SILVA SOUSA

Em 1936, eclodiu na Espanha a Guerra Civil. Esse conflito ceifou vidas, soterrou sonhos e foi uma derrota para anarquistas e comunistas. Na América Latina, o México, então governado pelo Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas, apoiou os combatentes republicanos. Além do governo, os comunistas mexicanos também se engajaram nessa Guerra. O Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM) utilizou as páginas do periódico El Machete para noticiar o desenrolar do conflito e também para angariar apoio aos republicanos. Assim, o presente artigo objetiva analisar o material impresso da Guerra Civil Espanhola publicado nas páginas do El Machete de 1936 a 1938. Por meio de uma análise do material, serão discutidas as estratégias discursivas que o periódico comunista mexicano utilizou em sua cobertura do conflito espanhol e a imagem que ele construiu para os leitores sobre a Guerra que estava em curso do outro lado do continente latino-americano.Palavras-chave: Imprensa Comunista. México. Espanha.A CIGARETTE FOR A FRIEND: The Spanish Civil War in the Mexican Communist PressAbstract: In 1936 the Civil War broke out in Spain. Such fighting mowed down lives, buried dreams and was a defeat for anarchists and communists. In Latin America, Mexico, then, ruled by General Lazaro Cardenas, supported the Republican fighters. Besides the government, the Mexican communists also supported the war. The Mexican Communist Party (MCP) used its periodical - the El Machete - to report the course of the conflict and also to raise support for the Spanish Republicans. Thus, this article aims to analyze the printed material from the Spanish Civil War published on the pages of El Machete from 1936 to 1938. Through the analysis of the material selected, it will be discussed the discursive strategies that the Mexican Communist journal used in its coverage of the Spanish conflict and the image it has presented to its readers about the war that was taking place across the Latin American continent.Keywords: Communist Press. Mexico. Spain.  UN CIGARRILLO A UN AMIGO: La Guerra Civil Española en la Prensa Comunista MexicanaResumen: En 1936 estalló en España la Guerra Civil. Este conflicto se ha cobrado vidas, sueños fueron enterrados y fue una derrocada para los anarquistas y comunistas. En América Latina, el México gobernado por el Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas apoyó a los combatientes republicanos. Además del gobierno, los comunistas mexicanos también participan en esa Guerra. El Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM) utilizó las páginas del periódico El Machete para informar el curso del conflicto y también para obtener el apoyo a los republicanos. Este artá­culo tiene como objetivo analizar el material de impresión de la Guerra Civil Española publicado en las páginas de El Machete, en el perá­odo de 1936 hasta 1938. A través del estudio de ese material, se discutirán las estrategias discursivas que El Machete utilizó en su cobertura del conflicto español y la imagen que se construyó para los lectores del periódico comunista mexicano de esa Guerra que estaba en marcha del otro lado del continente latino-americano.Palabras claves: Prensa comunista. México. España.


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